


Taste the Cider

by Arej



Series: Ineffable Advent 2019 [26]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Domestic Bliss, Kisses, M/M, Nonverbal Communication, Other, they're not really male but it's m/m since i used male pronouns throughout, when you know someone six thousand years words are sometimes unnecessary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:28:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21979579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arej/pseuds/Arej
Summary: Day 26 of the advent calendar of prompts.Crowley offers Aziraphale a taste of cider, and a look inside his heart.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Ineffable Advent 2019 [26]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561027
Comments: 7
Kudos: 123





	Taste the Cider

“Did you ever eat one of the apples?”

There’s no need to specify which apples - there has only ever been one variety of note, for them. Crowley keeps his eyes on the stove, deliberately not looking at the angel; Aziraphale fidgets in the silence.

They don’t talk about Eden, much. They talk about it more, now that Armageddon’t is a memory and not a looming threat, but _more_ is a vague and misleading word: if they talk about it once before the turn of the millennia, they’ll still have talked about it more often than they did before the world failed to end. By most standards, they still hardly speak of it. By _their_ standards, the handful of references they’ve been dropping at the edges of conversation is akin to holding a full academic conference. 

Crowley’s question, even so vague a question as this, feels rather like shouting from the rooftops, and he hasn’t even named it. He can feel Aziraphale’s surprise at his sudden boldness, the angel’s piercing blue gaze sitting like a cool hand on the back of his neck. It’s not a disapproving gaze - joking or serious, he’s been on the receiving end of both - and the weight is an oddly comforting thing, settling the flush threatening just under his shirt collar. So he waits, silent and patient, while Aziraphale’s mind turns through all the possible approaches to his answer, decides whether to match Crowley’s boldness or step further into ambiguity.

“I did, yes,” Aziraphale finally answers, just as Crowley starts to consider rescinding the question. “Before you…before. They weren’t forbidden to angels. Or, at least, I wasn’t told so.”

There is a curiosity in his voice, an extra inflection of inquiry, that volleys the question back to Crowley without words. It’s a familiar lilt - so much of their history, so many of their conversations are filled to bursting with unspoken things, with questions unvoiced and answers given by language more body than voice - and one that Crowley has never failed to answer. “Had to, didn’t I? Part of the job.”

Aziraphale hums thoughtfully. That - the method by which Crowley inadvertently secured himself rock star status in Hell - is another of the things they don’t talk about, by unspoken agreement, of course. They’d never be so gauche as to _talk_ about what they won’t talk about. Crowley bites back a snort at the thought; it would derail the conversation, and it’s not the right time or place to open that particular can of worms, anyway.

Warm hands cup his hips as Aziraphale steps close, presses himself into Crowley’s back. He tucks his chin over Crowley’s shoulder and winds his arms around the demon’s ribs, curling one hand over the opposite hip, his right coming up to rest over Crowley’s beating heart.

It beats a little faster, now, the way it always does when they’re like this. Close. Comfortable. Content.

Crowley leans back into the sheltering circle of the angel’s arms and doesn’t even pretend to fight the smile creeping across his face. Yeah, definitely not the right time for that can of worms. And there’s no hint of censure or anxiety coming from his angel; Crowley is starting to suspect things are staying unspoken because they’re both assuming the other still doesn’t want to talk about it. It wouldn’t surprise him, at this point. The number of ridiculous misunderstandings they’ve discovered, because they’re both so busy trying to predict what each other wants instead of communicating what _they_ want, could fill an entire comedy routine.

He’s about to bring this up to Aziraphale, original intention be damned, when the angel speaks. “Is there a reason you asked, dearest?”

In answer, Crowley lifts the spoon from the pot, turns his wrist carefully, and offers a taste to the angel on his shoulder. Aziraphale takes it with a pleased smile.

“Cider?” he asks after swallowing, thumb rubbing where Crowley’s heart beats at one and a half time inside his chest. Not double, not yet. Just a little extra hitch from close proximity.

Crowley, after dipping it back in the pot, offers the spoon again in lieu of an answer. This time Aziraphale rolls the flavor on his tongue, holds it in his mouth for a long moment before swallowing. His chin comes off the demon’s shoulder - Crowley fights back a pout of disappointment - when he leans slightly to the right to make proper eye contact. “Is that -”

“Not quite,” Crowley admits. And here, see, another reason so much goes unspoken - they don’t need to say it all out loud, not when they’ve known each other so long. Not when they can practically read each other’s thoughts. Not when they know each other so _well_. He stirs the gently simmering cider, swirls away the thought. “It’s close, though.”

“Very close,” Aziraphale agrees. He settles his chin back on Crowley’s shoulder when it becomes clear the demon isn’t interested in prolonged eye contact if it means less physical contact; something in Crowley’s soul settles at the familiarity of the gesture, at how easy it’s become to ask for more without really having to ask.

There it is again. He stirs the cider in the pot a little faster, trying to drown his line of thinking.

“I’ve been growing varietals in a few different gardens.” Maybe he can distract himself from contemplating the way they communicate by, well, _communicating_ , instead of just thinking about it. Although he specifically does not mention where the gardens are, or how many they number; he’s not quite ready to admit how involved this whole process has been, or how long he’s been working on it, or how important it feels, although Aziraphale - clever angel that he is - no doubt has his suspicions. “It’s not right, but this is the closest I’ve come.”

He adds a bit of brown sugar from the bowl on the countertop, stirs until it dissolves, offers Aziraphale another taste. When the angel hums in approval, he waves the rest of the sugar back to its packaging and the bowl back to the cabinet, as spotless as if it had never been used, before taking a taste for himself.

Yes, almost. A few more generations and he might yet have it.

“You’ve done a marvelous job,” Aziraphale murmurs from his shoulder. Now it is Crowley who hums thoughtfully, stirring the gently simmering cider.

“Not quite. Not yet. But I’ll get -”

“It’s perfect, dear.” Aziraphale’s tone is insistent; the arm slung low on his waist tightens to just shy of painful, exactly the way Crowley likes it. His heart picks up the pace even as he laughs breathlessly.

“It’s not perfect, angel, it’s -” Another laugh when Aziraphale taps a warning finger over Crowley’s double-time heart. “I’m not being too hard on myself. The cider tastes good enough, I’m not fussed about that. I promise. It’s just…not quite perfect, yet.”

He’s not talking about the cider, and they both know it; he’s thinking about apples, about a garden. About Eden, and tasting that first apple again, not on assignment but by _choice_ \- bringing that apple back to the two beings left who would recognize it, closing a loop he hadn’t realized he needed closed. He’d eaten one apple by himself, to show Eve it was safe. Had swallowed it whole, just the barest hint of juice and flesh as it squeezed past his fangs, a whisper of tart and sweet and promises of so much more. He wants to taste it, truly taste it; sink his teeth in, feel the skin give way, take the flesh into his mouth and know it the way the humans had. The way Aziraphale, apparently, had.

Aziraphale tastes lightly of apples, just a bit. Sweet and salt and musk, a light overlay of vanilla, and just there, at the very back - apples, but not any of the varieties Crowley has ever grown, not in all his years of research. He hadn’t known how Aziraphale tasted when he started, but now…

Crowley has a suspicion he’s been dying to confirm ever since he got that first taste of angel skin.

The chin on his shoulder disappears. Crowley opens his mouth to protest, but Aziraphale resettles closer, his breath washing over the skin of Crowley’s neck. Crowley curls his free hand, the one not clenching tightly around a mostly-forgotten spoon, over the wrist just left of his hip, leans more heavily into the angel. He is rewarded with a soft kiss just there, on breath-warmed skin, and his double-time heart skips a beat or three.

“It’s perfect,” Aziraphale insists, mouth curled into a smile where it’s pressed to Crowley’s skin. “It’s perfect right now, and it will be perfect later. There are infinities of perfection, Crowley, and you contain all of them.”

“Angel,” he protests, giving up on the spoon completely to raise a hand to white cloud curls. “Aziraphale…”

Crowley uses the last of his focus to turn the stove off, turning in the circle of his angel’s arms, saying with his lips and hands and tongue what his voice can’t manage. He speaks his love with kisses, kneads his gratitude with trembling fingers. He tucks his desperate need into Aziraphale’s mouth with a questing tongue, and Aziraphale answers in kind. Not a single word passes between them, but volumes are spoken; enough to fill a hundred books, a thousand, six thousand, one for every year of them and a few more just for good measure.

Behind them on the stove the cider cools, forgotten.


End file.
